I'm not arguing the relative comparison which shows less power consumption at comparable performance by a processor. I'm arguing this is only a small portion of the battery life consideration. Other considerations like camera use may matter more to users, in the final purchase decision.

Sure but we know battery life even under normal conditions exceeds 3 hrs, such as in the laptop battery test, regardless of processor.
http://blog.laptopmag.com/best-battery-life-longest-lasting-smart-phones

Don't see how the argument is valid. If one drives a car with engine at redline, the MPG would not be anywhere near the advertized. Do you use laptop or cell running non-stop math and graphics?
On the other hand, the relative performance is meaningful, unless you happen to be on the losing side, that is.

If one was to run any of these benchmark repeatedly, the phones battery would die quite quickly. However, we know that is not the case. However, processor power&performance does come into play in terms of total battery life and hence is important.

Les, my irritation if any is because I believe you are arguing semantics when the details really quite simple and this discussion relates to the article. Arguing semantics is not professional.
- Task time is inversely proportional to processing speed. Note that processing speed is one of the factors listed in this article.
- Power is directly proportional to average current (again, covered in this article).
Task Energy is proportional to (power)/(processing speed).
There are no other complexities. As this article stated, processing speed for the Intel chips were on part with the ARM chips, while average (and peak) current draw was significantly less. The ONLY interpretation that can be made is that task energy will be less. Any other conclusion would be to argue semantics.